Active Shooter (4 page)

I let my phone go on buzzing. It stopped by
the time I finished doing twenty-five pushups. With a dozen sighs I
worked to lower my heart rate. Once I felt I had subdued the worst
of my anxiety, I called Bridget.

“Did you get my message?” she asked.

“Nah. Saw the missed call and called
you.”

“Are you okay? I saw some guys following
you.”

“Some of my fans. You'll be happy to know I
managed to get to my hotel without giving out a single autograph.”
Bridget started to say something about how we left off, but I cut
in with, “Listen. If you're still up for it, I'd like to finish our
lunch.”

“Sure, actually, I'm still here.”

I cut her off again to tell her I'd be right
over. I scribbled a quick note on the hotel's provided notepad,
read it over, tore off the sheet and folded in fourths then stashed
it in my shirt pocket. For good measure, I tore off the next three
sheets and crumpled them into my pocket.

A quick taxi ride later, I was walking into
the restaurant. Before Bridget could say anything, I slipped her
the note. She read it, concealed between her dishes and the booth's
wall, then looked up at me and nodded.

As my note suggested, for the next hour we
shared and enjoyed white rice, black beans,
croquetas
and a
breaded steak, capping it all off with Coconut flavored
mojitos
. Our conversation meandered around inane topics like
my Cuban heritage, how much she loved Cuban food, how she was
working to set up a trip to Cuba, and would I be interested in
coming along.

When we decided we were sufficiently satiated
and marinated in garlic, we worked off the surplus Caribbean
calories with a slow, long walk to Central park where, as my note
had requested, Bridget guided us a fountain.

We found an empty spot, sat on the fountain's
ledge, and I whispered, “No cellphone, right?”

She nodded.

“We talk softly,” I added. “Let the water
provide us with white noise above the volume of our voices. That's
important. Our voices never rise above the volume of the water, no
matter how excited we become. Can you handle that?”

Her lips contracted into a tight line. “How
are they listening?”

“You need to kick up your feet for a few in
between those world-changing investigative reports, rent a spy
movie or two, or if you're running low on time, just Google
parabolic dish microphone.”

She nodded.

“Speaking of running low on time, let's get
right to it. You game?” I asked.

She looked away. I pressed on. “
If
I
am to be of help to you, I will need to know how you know what you
know about me.”

“Is that what they want you to do?”

“Now who's being direct?”

“Well?”

“It's what I need.”

She turned back with a frown. “Really.”

“It's my neck on the line. Really and truly.
So I repeat. Are you game?”

She considered my question for a moment.
“Suppose I share all that I know. Then what?”

“Then comes full cooperation. You want that,
right? Full cooperation?”

“Sure--”

“We need each other,” I said, feeling a
little rude for cutting her off.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

I pointed at my Adam's apple “My neck,
remember?”

“What are we into here?”

“I thought you knew.”

Her frown deepened. “You're trying to spook
me. They sent you to frighten me away.”

“If you're not spooked already, I don't know
what I could do to make it happen.”

She looked away, still frowning. I watched
her profile, her face slowly returning to a softer expression, her
lips tightening into a thin line.

“I'm not sure this is best,” she said.

“Getting cold feet, then.”

She paused to let her bright blue eyes drill
into my dead brown ones. “Just like you want. Me backing off and
walking away.”

“I've given up worrying about what I want. I
never get it. So when presented with a choice, I don't bother
asking what I want. I just react. Like I did in that terminal. Like
I did when you called me to ask for an interview. Like I'm doing
now. Just doing what feels right in the moment.”

“This is crazy.”

“No, Bridget.
I'm
crazy. Your source
hopefully told you that. If not, all the same, there. Full
disclosure. That's why I turned to a life as a photographer.
Because I find it immensely therapeutic.”

She looked away and shook her head.

“Careful, now,” I whispered. “They may not
hear us, but they are watching your reactions and mine. Remember,
most communication comes through body language.”

“You have five minutes to explain what you
want.”

“For the third time, my neck. I want it
intact and attached.”

“I'm not buying it. There's something else
going on here.”

“And if there is, what would that be?” I
asked, acknowledging to myself her instincts were solid.

“You're working for them. For whoever is
listening or not listening or watching or whatever. You're here to
pump me for information, maybe feed me junk along the way, and find
out who my source is.”

“You forgot the part where I seduce you and
setup a gooey honey trap.”

“Your five minutes are dwindling, Andre.”

“Here’s what I find interesting,” I said.
“You probably have never seen this source of yours. My guess is
that you do all your communications via computer through a variety
of protected means. How am I doing?”

Bridget didn’t respond, but the way she
shifted her weight told me I had connected.

“Yet,” I went on. “In spite of all the
caution you know about, you decide to meet me out in the open,
where God and country and all its demons can monitor us. You burn
us, and you expect--”

“I tried to be discrete. To use
counter-measures.”

At this point I could have belittled her. I
could have chastised her for her lack of a clue. That wouldn’t take
me anywhere, however, so I opted for, “We’re burned, Bridget. You
and I. They know we’re talking, and they know it’s not because
we’ve gotten sweet on each other.”

“You obviously knew that coming into this
meeting. Why are we here?”

“Because I want to explore the
possibilities.”

“Can we stop playing here? What are you
after? What do you get out of it?”

“Ouch, speaking of direct.”

“Well? Why would I want to go along with this
craziness?” she asked. “Your craziness, as you called it.”

“Oh, so the real question is what do
you
get out of it.”

“Both of the above.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But you have to be
ready for the answer.”

“Which is?”

“To make sure you and your source don't end
up dead and pull me down with you.”

She looked away. At that moment, a
photographer walking backwards and snapping shots of a couple
walking toward him came into our field of view. I almost made a
comment about how much I'd rather be doing that, but I left it
unsaid for fear I'd sound whiny and petty. Then I realized that the
photographer and the couple were play actors, as was Guayabera man,
standing behind a tree, now having traded his shirt for one of the
loud Hawaiian variety.

“You think that's a possibility,” she said.
“Us ending up dead.”

“Death always is. In this case its
probability increases with your proximity to pay dirt.”

“You're worried about me.”

“I guess I am. Yes.”

She considered that before turning to face
me. “Funny you should say that. She's worried about you.”

“Who?”

“My source.”

“Your source is concerned about me.” I said
that wanting to sound cynical, but hearing the fear in my wavering
voice.

Bridget kept looking at me, as if to gauge
the impact of her revelation, or perhaps to judge whether what she
was about to say would betray the identify of her source. She
looked away and scanned our surroundings.

“She says there's something odd about the way
your social profile hasn't taken off.”

“You mean after the shooting?”

“Yeah.”

“It's taken off enough.”

“According to her, not the way it should
have,” Bridget replied. “Like someone is
dampening
it, she
says.” She let that word,
dampening
float between us. Her
eyes sharpened, glimmering with her scrutiny of my reaction to
it.

“Dampening,” I said, unable to restrain
myself from confirming that much.

“You know about this. The capability to
manipulate stories and the perception of news events.”

“Politicians and their handlers do it all the
time.”

“More than that,” she said.
“Government-sponsored, algorithmically aided.”

Now I looked away. Could they have gone live
this soon? If what I knew before my prior career came to an end
still held true, deployment was years away, not yet approved. Had
things changed? Had the powers that be accelerated the program? But
above all those questions, her claim that someone had aimed and
fired the
capability
at me disturbed me most.

“If your source is right, then we really have
reason to worry.”

“Or we are that much closer to exposing
whatever the hell is going on,” she said. “I can’t believe they
would take a chance on exposing themselves by trying to minimize a
story like yours. Unless…” Bridget paused there, not needing to say
that they would never risk it unless they thought my anonymity was
worth it.

I pondered how best to proceed. It would do
me no good to push for Bridget to tell me who this source of hers
was. It was my business to know, now that my safety came into
question. Still, I knew Bridget wouldn't budge.

“Tell your source I'm touched by her
concern,” I said. “Tell her to text me or friend me on Facebook
next time.”

“She can't do that. You know why.”

Yeah, I knew why. I thought about this for a
moment, and my mind landed on my phone's display earlier that day,
showing me the notification of an incoming text message.

“Ever get strange text messages, Bridget?
From
withheld
?”

She was frowning at me now. “Got one this
morning, before the interview.”

“Your first?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say?”

“
Play along
.” Bridget hissed more than
whispered those words.

The same foreboding that overtook me at the
hotel before I returned Bridget's call came over me now. I couldn't
explain it. I only had the impression that I should know who
she
was based on what Bridget had shared thus far, without
the need for further details. But I needed Bridget to elaborate. If
she could only show me a picture, I thought. My mind raced
cognizant that it should know her source's identity only to draw
dry pails out of a black well.

“I guess we should, then,” I said. “Play
along to get along.”

“She wanted to talk,” I said, hearing my
voice echo off the smooth whitewashed walls of what doubled as a
conference room or interrogation room. “That’s what you wanted me
to do, isn’t it? Talk to her?”

“Why did you choose a location where we
couldn't hear you?”

“She insisted.”

“You mean Ms. Suarez.”

“Who else are we talking about here?” I
asked.

My interrogator, a man in his twenties with a
salt and pepper goatee, sighed and leaned back in his chair. He
kept staring at me, as if his glare alone could break me. His
partner, standing a few feet away with arms folded, gave me a
similar look.

So intimidating, I wanted to say, but didn't.
Had they already forgotten how the trained me to survive much worse
than this?

When he satisfied himself he'd impressed me
enough, he said to his side-kick, “What do you think, Jim? This guy
playing us?”

“Of course he is.”

“Of course I am,” I said. “I can't do
otherwise.” I pointed to the half-inch thick folder on the table,
the one they'd dropped there with a clap and not touched since.
“I'm sure it says so right in there.”

They both stared at me now. The room was
cold. They'd brought me in here wearing nothing but a T-shirt while
they wore ties and jackets. Given the blowing air-conditioning, I
should have been shivering from the inside out. But I wasn't.

“What's your game?” the lead interrogator
said.

“No longer in the game. You guys kicked me
out, remember? No longer fit to play.”

“Did she tell you anything about her
source?”

“What did I say the first time you asked me
that question? And the second time?”

“You tell us.”

“Why should I? You're obviously not paying
attention to anything I say. But then there’s the video recording.
Go hit replay. No need for me to waste my saliva.”

“You like that one. Saying you're wasting
your saliva.”

If I answered that, I would be wasting more
of it, so I didn't. Instead, knowing they would realize what I was
doing, I closed my eyes and started counting. A thousand-one, a
thousand-two, a thousand-three, and so on, until I got to twenty,
then all over again. I kept doing that through their shouting,
through their banging on the table, through their pushing me until
I almost fell off my chair, and until they walked out of the
room.

A couple of minutes later, I heard the door
click open. When I opened my eyes, I saw Walter, leaning against
the wall, arms crossed.

“I didn't take you for a praying man,” he
said with a wry smile.

“But it worked.” I stretched out my hands and
arms to him. “You said you'd come when I needed you, and here you
are.”

“What's going on, Andre?”

“What you wanted to go on. Me playing
counter-intel with Bridget, just like you asked. The other thing
that's going is you guys going all spastic on me.”